Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Word technology stems from ancient Greek terms for crafting
We use it to describe glowing glass slabs and server farms, but the root word is charmingly primitive. 'Tekhne' is the ancient Greek word for art, craft, or…
Discover more
Wireless charging pads transfer energy via magnetic fields
Plugging something in is apparently too exhausting for modern society, so we rely on invisible forces. A coil inside the pad generates an alternating…
Discover more
VoLTE networks treat voice calls as standard data
Voice calls used to be special, but now your voice is just treated like a compressed image file. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) abandons the dedicated voice circuits…
Discover more
Steve Jobs named the Apple Lisa after his daughter
Ah, the classic 'name a revolutionary computer after the child you pretend doesn't exist' maneuver. Steve Jobs initially insisted that 'Lisa' stood for Local…
Discover more
Why fast charging can turn your phone into a hand warmer
Pumping massive amounts of wattage into a device in fifteen minutes defies the gentle laws of thermodynamics. The sheer electrical resistance of cramming that…
Discover more
Electronic breadboards connect components without solder
Before committing to permanently melting metal, engineers aggressively shove sharp wires into tiny springy clips hidden beneath plastic holes, blindly hoping…
Discover more
STACKY FOR IPHONEA bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.
Keep discovering with Stacky. Interesting facts in an app that is always within reach.
Why Duck Hunt becomes impossible on round 99
Your trusty light gun is completely useless against the inevitable decay of software integers. Reaching round 99 rolls the counter over to zero, causing ducks…
Discover more
Mark Twain submitted the first typewritten novel manuscript
Long before tech bros were early adopting VR headsets, Mark Twain was flexing his mechanical keyboard. He purchased a Remington typewriter in 1874 and…
Discover more
Why regular expressions look like gibberish
A text-matching script that is so densely packed with arcane symbols, slashes, and brackets that it is completely unreadable to anyone who didn't personally…
Discover more
Loot boxes look a lot like gambling
The industry found a highly profitable way to bypass gambling laws by targeting children. By exchanging real money for a random chance at a digital cosmetic…
Discover more
Geostationary satellites stubbornly hover over one spot
Most things heavily floating in orbit are desperately racing around the entire globe multiple times a single day. Communication networks heavily park massive…
Discover more
Ribbon cables save space but horribly restrict airflow
Wide, flat, and aggressively ugly. Ribbon cables were designed to lay flat against surfaces, but in standard desktop cases, they act like massive plastic…
Discover more
Parity bits count ones and zeros to spot mistakes
To prevent data from secretly corrupting itself during a transfer, systems attach a single extra digit called a parity bit. It counts whether the total number…
Discover more
Your emoji is really just a number
That laughing-crying face isn't a picture; it's just a soulless numerical assignment. Under the hood, emojis are dictated by the Unicode standard, which…
Discover more
A typist can press three keys during one blink
You are literally too slow to watch someone type. A standard human eye blink takes about 300 to 400 milliseconds. A professional typist hammering out 120…
Discover more
Why receipts turn black in the heat
You have probably noticed that store receipts left in a hot car mysteriously turn completely black. That is because the machines printing them do not use a…
Discover more
Why passwords need a secret pepper
Because salt wasn't culinary enough, cryptographers introduced the 'Pepper'. While salt is stored alongside the encrypted data, a pepper is a secret…
Discover more
How a sewing machine ties two threads together
It doesn't poke a single string in and out like a hand needle. The top needle violently shoves a loop of thread through the fabric, where a spinning…
Discover more
Google handles billions of frantic questions every day
That is roughly 99,000 queries per second of humanity asking machines why their stomach hurts or how to boil an egg. Google's server farms are essentially…
Discover more
How traffic lights know your car is waiting
There is no camera watching you wait in the dark. Instead, buried wires create an electromagnetic field that detects the massive chunk of metal sitting above…
Discover more
Why basic calculators still use liquid crystals
While modern televisions abandoned the absolute oldest iteration of flat screens decades ago, the basic math device stubbornly refuses to evolve. The bleak…
Discover more
The Mac startup sound was designed to calm you down
If you owned a computer in the 90s, turning it on was a game of Russian roulette. The jarring error beeps of early Macs gave users literal anxiety. Jim…
Discover more
The first electronic message crossed the same room
The grand inauguration of digital communication was about as anti-climactic as possible. The very first networked electronic message was sent between two…
Discover more
Laptop hinges crack from basic friction
Buying a premium machine does not save you from the inevitable crunch of a breaking hinge. Manufacturers screw tight tension hinges directly into cheap…
Discover more